My rent. I live by myself in a 3-level, 3BR townhouse and pay almost $1500/month; even the realtor who helped me find this place two years ago asked (tactfully) if I was sure I needed someplace this big. I tried to explain that it’s not the size so much as the sheer fact that it’s not an apartment (size kind of comes with that), and that – to me – it’s worth a signficant chunk of my income to be able to relax and feel comfortable where I live. And, of course, I get the standard “why are you paying so much in rent? why don’t you just buy a place?” lectures from well-meaning family members who have no freaking clue what it takes to buy a place around here.
Also, my cable + cable modem. My uncle practically sputters whenever we get to talking about our utilities (it always starts out friendly, comparing prices here to those in NYC) and I tell him that my combined bill is almost $100/month. Nearly half of it is for the cable modem, which I’ll give up when someone pries it out of my cold, dead hand; the other half is for basic, analog cable, which is the bare minimum I’m willing to accept.
Getting my hair professionally colored. I have long hair and nearly destroyed it when I dyed it myself. Some folks can get great results doing it themselves, but I am not one of them.
So for me it’s worth spending the cash, and getting to relax in a chair and be pampered for a couple of hours.
Cable internet – I don’t know how I lived without it.
Room service – If I’m on vacation, I want to be pampered, and food brought right to my room is worth it. A club sandwich for $25? Fine, but bring it to me.
Clothes, Shoes, Bags
I will not buy cheap clothes, shoes or bags. The other night I got called stupid for buying a pair of hosiery that cost $18. They sure were right purty, though.
Hair
I go to the salon every week.
High Speed Internet Access
Dial-up? Uh, no.
Air Conditioning
Luckily, it’s been very mild here. When the summer-like weather sets in, however, my AC will be on 24/7 until October or so.
Cars
I drive European cars.
Make-up
I don’t have a lot, but what I do have is pretty high-end; no drug store stuff.
Cable internet (canceled the cable TV - I never watched it)
$48/haircut (including tip), every 4 weeks, no exceptions
$9.99/lb. turkey at Wild Oats - it just tastes better (I only buy 1/4 lb./week)
$1.69 for Greek yogurt at Trader Joe’s (I don’t eat it every day, but it’s REALLY REALLY good with fresh fruit)
Probably other food-related stuff that I’m forgetting.
Nevermind some of my coworkers spend more on their golf game every year than I do on my flying, they still see me renting a squalid two-seat Cessna as extravegent.
Oh, how much? About $70-110/hour, depending on which variety of airplane I’m renting, although I have my eye on a Stearman that goes for $165/hour
I love (I mean Luuuuuv) riding behind my boat. Skate, Board, Ski, feet, I love it all. Even tubing. I spend way too much of the summer at the end of a rope, loudly demanding “just one more pull”. Since it (my boat) is an overpowered, geared down inboard (>300 hp) , we get about 1.5 mpg. Sometimes we ballast up by taking on 1500 pounds of water (better wake). This makes the mileage go from “bad” to “criminal”. (you don’t wanna know). Add that to feeding the 6 mpg RV (gotta stay in comfort, right?) and my Exxon bill sometimes approaches my mortgage.
[dons mithril & asbestos flame-suit… ducks behind rock]
(This is almost identical. But without the aluminum thingie overhead.
Cable TV, cable broadband and some kind of DVR service, it comes to about $100/month for all of that.
I also eat high fiber grain foods (instead of the white grains) like low carb tortillas. They go for about $3.60 a pack instead of $0.99 a pack like regular flour tortillas but they have 10-15 grams of fiber each so I buy them instead. Whole grain/high fiber tortillas, bread, spaghetti & rice is about 2-3x as expensive as white, but still not a huge expense (maybe an extra $15/month).
I pay to have a lot of things done. We get the house cleaned every two weeks. I get my shirts for work laundered more often than not. I pay for a good car wash every couple of months. These are all things I could do myself, but I realized that I don’t have the time, energy, or inclination to do them as well as I’d like them to be done. I do, however, have the money.
We’re buying a huge house next year–way too big for just the two of us. It seems extravagant, even to us, but we know that we not only love the house, but it’s also a good investment (this particular house, that is, not necessarily any big house).
I am NOT going to be cold in my own house. When we visit my parents in spring or autumn, they never have the heating on - the house is perishing. When my husband and I were engaged, we went to visit them for the first time. He’d be sitting there shivering, and my mum would say to him “You’re not cold are you??” He was too polite to say anything, then would wake me up in the middle of the night begging me to find more blankets.
And as a kid they always religiously switched off every light - if my mother was first out of a room she’d have the light off before we were finished walking! Now I have as many lights as I want on, and stuff it. I hate seeing pools of darkness at the edge of my vision, so I’ll have all rooms within sight of each other lit -so if I’m in our living room then the Japanese room, kitchen, hall and study will have some lighting in them (it needn’t be EVERY bulb in the place!).
My friends think I’m extravagent for using the dishwasher. Usually I’m the only person here but I will not do dishes by hand. The only things that get washed by hand are the cast iron fry pans and the cast iron dutch oven.
I will not part with my cable internet access. My sisters-in-law think this is an unnecessary luxury.
I will never have another car that does not have air conditioning.
Manicures. I enjoy them, and I can do a pretty decent manicure on myself, even a French, but it’s simply not quite as nice. Plus, I think it’s relaxing when someone else does it. This is one of those things where I’m glad I know how so that I could do it if I had to (like if I were stranded on a desert island all by myself, and needed a French manicure), but I’m pleased to spend the money for the luxury.
Books. I buy a lot of books. I realize (as many people like to point out) that I could go to the library, but I’m not that great of a library user. It’s not very conveniently located to our house, its hours don’t work very well with my schedule, and I’m really very poor at returning the books in a timely way. Other library users should be happy that I don’t use the library more often, because if I did it would cause some serious book shortages.
And the laundry service thing from the other thread. I hope I didn’t horrify anyone too badly!
I got started on synthetic socks at some point I was jogging, or maybe bicycling a lot. And pretty much since then I have refused to buy cotton socks ever again. I end up paying $8-$15 for one pair of acrylic/lycra-mix socks when cotton ones are six-pairs-for-$5, but the good ones feel so much more comfortable all the time. I won’t buy cotton socks anymore, won’t carry them home even for free. When I go to a new store and see a rack of athletic socks, if they are not super-cheap (which is a giveaway that they are cotton) I turn the labels over to see what they are made of. In any group of typical people, I am generally am wearing the nicest socks in the room.
Also I gave up using “fake butter” some years ago. Margarine, vegetable-?stuff?, horsepiss spread, “I can’t believe it’s not batshit”, whatever you call it. I don’t know that this is so much a financial extravagance as a philisophical one, but my mother got on the whole “butter is bad for you” bit and after some years of this I noticed that nothing made with fake butter cooks right or tastes right and I don’t use much of it on anything so the calories involved are pretty insignificant anyway. I’m mildly overweight but mildly fit anyway (see socks above), so screw it. Only real butter for me please. And I kinda wonder about the mental conditions of people now who are execessive in their diets otherwise and/or lacking in physical activity or general health habits, but who avoid butter out of the fear that it will cause something horrible to happen to them.
~
Pedicures. I love love love love love getting pedicures. I’m getting one on Saturday. Can’t wait. I’m getting a manicure too, which is very rare for me. I will be so fancy!
Soaps and makeup. You know what? It’s better than the drugstore stuff. Not to mention if you get it at a counter, there’s someone to explain how to use it and help you pick out the colors. Which is great for people like me who missed the How To Be Girly lessons in junior high.
Fortunately for me, my friends are all book people too, so they think my bibliomania is perfectly normal.
Pens and other school supplies. I spend so much more than I need to on them, but they make me HAPPY. For an extra 10 bucks, that’s not so bad - although most people would flip at paying 12$ for a notebook.
